Browse-By-Cover....it's here!

updated 07/31/07

Well everyone, El Camino has really taken this project under his wing and has brought to my attention a version of the cover flow that REALLY works! He's modified my original version and taken it to another level! Below is a download link to his super duper version. Make sure to read the README included in the archive for proper installation. Credit to El Camino for this great integration of Nathan's @n99creations.com Flash creation.

ORIGINAL POST:
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This is a follow up to this previous thread.

Well, it's finally here, browsing by album art has arrived to an RR skin near you! Using Nathan's (www.n99creations.com) source which pretty much does the bulk of the work, I've modified it to work with RR, display album art and load an M3U list when you click on an album art. The info (i.e. path of each album, path of album art file, path of M3U file etc) is read from an XML file. The main issue with the flash swf right now is CPU load becomes very very high when in use which Nathan is aware of and I believe is trying to fix but for now this is way better than anything, at least for me it is.

I have also created a separate program in VB that scans your albums folder and creates an XML file with the necessary info. My music is in the following structure so my program is specifically written and has been tested with this structure. It MAY work for you or it may not.
-mp3s
--albums
----album 1
----album 2
----album 3

If it doesn't work, just edit the XML file to fit your needs and test it out from there (see the included installation instructions in the readme).

Future plans:
-create and display a track list for each album when album art is displayed and allow for a selected track to be played.

Come on Nathan! Hopefully he will get back with you soon! I have his code right now, but that just displays the album art nice and pretty, and nothing else

Watching this thread very closely!

As it may not be apparent in your screen cap, this swf has a transparent background. Here is a screen cap from some of my tinkering with it getting ready for the RR version

One thing I did think of, is being the swf IS transparent, that actually takes a LOT more CPU usage. Sometimes in the neighborhood of 50% more CPU. I have seen many posts from CDR and other flash guru's telling people when they write flash apps for RR to make it non transparent. I wonder if this would be the speed up that Nathan needs.....

One thing I did think of, is being the swf IS transparent, that actually takes a LOT more CPU usage. Sometimes in the neighborhood of 50% more CPU. I have seen many posts from CDR and other flash guru's telling people when they write flash apps for RR to make it non transparent. I wonder if this would be the speed up that Nathan needs.....

Hmmm good point. I wonder, would adding "SOLID" after the F definition in the skin file of RR help the CPU usage at all?

i know this hasnt even been released yet, but i already have a feature request.

instead of / in addition to the scroll bar at the bottom, i would like to request an option to scroll through the items by simply dragging your finger across them (actually touching the covers). it could be set up to if you just point and click, it selects the album, but if you point and hold, then it becomes dragging mode and you can scroll through items like that.

also, (like the iphone) the next step in this would be that it would keep scrolling until the screen is touched again to stop it. of course the scrolling would go as fast as the user 'flicks' the albums to go.

again, keep up the good work -i downloaded all the source files from nathan and messed with them myself, but it was all too intimidating for me. thanks for everything again

A Green Light to release it!

Reading N99's site, you do not need permission to release this. It would be nice to have Nathan's blessing and backing, but it is not necessary.

From N99's site:

* By choosing to download source files available from n99creations you hereby agree not to resell, redistribute or republish any source without express written consent from it's proprietary owner or n99creations.com.

If you read closely, this means you can make an application from the source and share it, sell it or whatever. It simply means not to modify the source code, and then re-distribute/sell the source code itself.

This makes 100% sense, as if you are going to release the source code to something, you are opening it to others to alter and change. If you did not want others messing with it, you would never release the source code, just the Swf itself.